Yankee Creek Hike (8.5km)

Spread across the central Victorian highlands between Daylesford, Woodend and Blackwood, Wombat State Forest sits along both sides of the Great Dividing Range in a landscape of regrowth eucalypt forest, ferny gullies, creeks and spring-fed flats. It is a forest with a long working history, but also one with unusually strong natural contrasts for this part of Victoria: wetter southern slopes, drier country to the north, and a patchwork of soils and elevations that support noticeably varied bush from one area to the next.

Water is one of the region's most distinctive threads. The forest is an important catchment, with the headwaters of the Lerderderg, Moorabool, Coliban, Campaspe and Loddon rivers rising here, and it also holds an exceptional concentration of mineral springs. Around Daylesford and Hepburn Springs especially, that underlying geology gives the broader Wombat country a character quite different from many inland forests, where cold springs, damp creeklines and volcanic soils shape both the vegetation and the feel of the landscape.

The forest also carries the marks of repeated change. Gold mining and timber cutting altered large areas in the past, so much of what visitors see now is regrowth rather than untouched bush, with younger forest mixed with older hollow-bearing trees. Those hollows remain important habitat for wildlife, including the Southern Greater Glider in parts of the forest, and recent storm damage in 2021 affected large areas, bringing down many trees and changing some sections quite dramatically. Even so, that mix of disturbance and recovery is part of what makes the area feel so layered rather than uniform.

Wombat State Forest lies on the Countries of the Dja Dja Wurrung, Wadawurrung and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples, and current planning for the wider Wombat-Lerderderg landscape reflects that shared cultural geography. For walkers, that broader context matters. This is not an isolated block of bush but part of a larger central-west Victorian upland system where forest, water catchments, mineral spring country and nearby townships all meet, giving the region a strong sense of connection between natural history, cultural history and present-day recovery.